Locked into success

After finishing third in the Summit League and making the semifinals in the Summit League Tournament, second year Head Coach Carrie Eighmey has received a contract extension.

USD’s Women’s Basketball team improved by 15 wins from year one to year two under Eighmey. Her new contract is a five year deal that has her at South Dakota until the 2030-2031 season.

“We had a great year this year, a ton of credit to our student athletes,” Eighmey said. “We just had a phenomenal group that worked really hard, played hard and played well together.” 

Most of the team last year was made up of transfer students, which helped with turnaround for the team, but Eighmey wants to focus on local talent to build her roster.

“A lot of our recruiting within the region is if you draw a big six hour circle around where we’re at, that’s kind of where we’d like to really lean on getting most of our recruits from,” Eighmey said.

Even though Eighmey did a large chunk of work in the portal last year, she still wants to focus on homegrown talent, especially in small communities like the Midwest.

“I think that has a lot to do with the recruiting process, and I’ll credit our staff,” Eighmey said. “They’ve done a phenomenal job.” 

Eighmey has a vision set to continue the success at USD after the season she had in year two.

“Obviously, the standard having done what we did this year, we don’t want to go backwards, but at the same time, every year, it’s a new year, different team, the defense and rebounding,” Eighmey said. “We want that to be something that we can rely on year in and year out. Hopefully next year’s team is going to come with that same mindset, that same toughness on the defensive end.” 

Eighmey enjoys having the portal and high school recruiting, but she doesn’t look to make a big splash in those areas, but rather the background of a player.

“I think one of the areas that we’ve been able to be successful in is finding players who fit us and who fit kind of what we’re looking for in the way that we want to play,” Eighmey said. “Most importantly, we want players who obviously love the game of basketball who work really hard, who are unselfish and great teammates.” 

Eighmey will look to senior guard Molly Joyce to lead the team next year. Joyce was the newcomer of the year, second team All Summit League and second on the team in points, averaging over 13 points a game.

Photo Credit: Sydney Kolln